


Just Another Halloween

by Calliatra



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Halloween, Light Angst, Some Humor, Trick or Treat 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliatra/pseuds/Calliatra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which nothing happens, and no one notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Halloween

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glasskites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasskites/gifts).



> I liked your letter, so I wrote you a little treat. Hope you enjoy it! :)

Annie was never invited to the cool parties. Or even the uncool parties. But she told herself she had to get up early the next day to study anyway, so she went to bed early and tried to ignore the sounds of the doorbell.

Shirley had her children to protect. From poison and drugs and razor blades in candy, but also from the devil worshippers and demons. She turned the porch light off, and made sure they spent their evening praying. And she tried hard not to notice the way her boys looked when laughter and shrieks from the street made it in through the closed window.

Jeff made sure he never looked over-invested. The thing to wear to a costume party was something that made him look handsome and suave, but that also made it clear he hadn’t put any thought into it. It was about showing status, not about fun. Not that dressing up as Spider-Man or whatever would be fun anyway. Elaborate costumes were for lonely weirdos.

Abed always had the best costumes. He made them himself, in his room at night, when his father couldn’t yell at him for wasting time on things he was too old for. One year he was Superman, mainly because wanting to be Superman is a rite of passage. Another year he was Indiana Jones, complete with hat and whip and accurately ripped jacket. They were great costumes, impressive costumes, but he was the only one who thought so.

Britta refused to be cute for candy. She refused to dress up for candy. She refused to participate in a culture that taught girls to present themselves as oversexualized fantasy creatures so that pervy old men would reward them. Her parents had no such qualms, so she locked herself in her room and wrote a strongly-worded article for her school newspaper while her parents perpetuated oppression downstairs.

Troy was a football player. He was cool and he did what was cool, and he definitely didn’t do anything that was uncool. Drinking was cool, dressing up was uncool. So he went to the cool party and drank the cool beer and definitely didn’t wish he could still put on a costume and go trick or treating.

The Dean kept his favorite costumes all lined up on a rack. They were at the back of his closet, behind a divider carefully labeled _Sis_ , just in case anyone ever checked. And there they stayed while the Dean put on something respectable, something with pants, something that would show everyone he was a good and respectable Dean.

And now here they all are, in the actually pretty impressively decorated library - there go the funds for the swim team - at what is indisputably a cool party, if only because for some reason they all share the gut feeling that the air conditioning should definitely be on high.

Shirley’s kids have the run of the place, and are taking full advantage of it, while their mother keeps half an eye on them from the dance floor. Britta is dressed as an unsexy astronaut, and if others are offering her food, it’s only because it turns out astronaut suits are a little difficult to handle in normal gravity. Jeff is wearing an expensive suit, as always, but his keychain says _Wayne Enterprises_ , and the Dean is rocking a vampiress costume that’s been getting more than a few compliments ever since someone spiked the punch.

Troy and Abed are in matching costumes that look like they’re probably perfect replicas of monsters from some bad cult horror flick no one else has seen. They’re still pretty scary, though, especially when Abed goes into character, and they’re shoo-ins to win the costume contest. Annie went with Elizabeth Swann rather than B-movie-monster-victim, but she’s apparently been creatively integrated into whatever scene the three of them are currently reenacting next to the buffet.

All around them, the party is in full and happy swing, and the one thing none of them notice is how unremarkable all of this feels.


End file.
